


Kissing Girls You Shouldn't Kiss

by piecesofalice



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Life, Psych, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:53:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofalice/pseuds/piecesofalice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With thanks to Hawksley Workman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kissing Girls You Shouldn't Kiss

  
_In a world that's burning down  
What time is it now?_   
\- Hawksley Workman, "Kissing Girls (You Shouldn't Kiss)"

  
\---

  
_I resist, there's no point in it_   
**Charlie**

  
\---

He's pretty sure she smells like his first girlfriend, some fruity, tangy scent that's become a fashion magazine staple and he feels like he's eighteen again.

  
She's not eighteen, though. Well, he _thinks_ she's not, and he remembers she has two blonde pigtails sticking out of her head, a slab of gum she was chewing on like Daisy the Cow, and he worries for a minute.

  
_No, she was buying a drink,_ he rationalises, and her large, braless chest is in his face as she asks the inevitable question, "why don't you have any furniture?"

  
Because he gave up his quota when he got thrown in jail and his wife left him. Because it comes from IKEA, a place you can't really go to by yourself, and Ted _hates_ IKEA and Dani? Well, Dani loves it but he can't ask Dani because she'd look at him that way and he'd just have to smile.

  
He doesn't answer her out loud, of course, and she doesn't care because he's got money and some sort of infamy. So her thin tank is over her head and he's now certain she hasn't had any sort of breast enhancement, and suddenly he just wants to go to IKEA and eat fruit on the steps that lead down to the workout oval.

  
Still, he kisses her, hard. But he doesn't smile, or think about furniture because she'll be gone tomorrow in a haze of yesterday's perfume.

  
\---

  
_Empty as a hotel room_   
**Carlton**

  
\---

The bed is made every day, every morning, so he kind of hates it when the sheets are tossed. But it's strange, because she knows the pattern - tiny throw pillows, then the big ones, then pulling back the decorative cover - and it's so close to the day they bought this bed it throws his head for a loop.

  
"Victoria," he mutters against her hair, and he notices she's gotten those awful French tipped nails O'Hara always pointed out on the hookers they pulled in from the esplanade. "Victoria!" and she finally stops clawing at his shirt, pulling back and staring in to his eyes like a lion with its lunch.

  
"I'm not doing this," and she lets out a grunt of frustration and he just thinks, _her skirt is too short_.

  
"Carl_ton_," is the way she says his name, fixing her lipstick in the mirror they bought together in a frenzy of post-honeymoon madness, and he always hated the way she lilted the "-ton" to mean so much more than just the end of his name, or, he supposed, a measure of weight.

  
He thought about his name being two separate parts, like the two separate Victorias he thought existed - pre- and post-divorce - but the detective inside him slowly put his first name back together. Like the two Victorias that were probably always this one, and he sat down on the flowery country chic chair he'd always wanted to put in the back yard and shoot at until it fell apart.

  
O'Hara lifted his name at the end like that, too, but she didn't make his hand itchy for his gun or bring up memories of crying into scotch because she'd wanted to sell his vinyl collection on eBay.

  
O'Hara liked flowers but not expensive ones, and chairs that were for sitting in, not watched like crappy museum pieces. Her nails were short, and functional, with a pink gloss coating them and a skirt that was both feminine and of a proper, police standard length.

  
Victoria walked out of the room they once shared, muttering his name and probably her lawyer's. He could taste her on his mouth, so he shuffled into the bathroom and brushed his teeth.

  
\---

  
_We are strange_   
**Bobby**

  
\---

_It was always going to end up like this, Bobby,_ she was thinking, as her mouth pushed down on his and he remembered what it was like when she was dead.

  
_You feed on everything that's raw and hateful,_ he was thinking, as his long-growing beard scratched against her pale, sunless skin that was close to the colour of his own, thanks to his self-imposed exile in his own apartment.

  
_What would she think? What?_ ran through both their brains, as Nicole wrapped her fingers around his neck and seemed to drink in his pain and sorrow and pity and he wasn't even surprised to see her at his mother's grave. Blonde hair in a black widow's hat, and she got off on pretending they were a couple or _something_, and he wanted to push her off and ring Eames and rock himself to sleep again.

  
_But you won't,_ and he didn't, and he hated himself more when he thought of how she would rub this in his partner's face the next day.

  
\---

  
_In an empire's final glow_   
**Roman**

  
\---

There's elements of power, then there's women. Far and beyond, they're kinetic and dynamic and soft like feather down, touching skin and creating the universe in one fell swoop. They're lines and movement, they're tangible and an alternate reality, and he loved every single one of them, even the ones he had to hurt to show them his love.

  
This one? Well, this one. She didn't know the half of her power and thought it all fell behind a badge, with her brown hair pushed into a bun and her mouth pursed into a bow. Tiny and amazing, so fuckable and delectable, she came to _him_ after they met in an interrogation room and it was _wonderful_.

  
Full of lust and tenacity, he had one eye on the door and the other on her breasts, because he had the niggling feeling in the back of his brain of a picture of a praying mantis his papa used to have tattooed on his arm before he left his mother for a whore.

  
Her tongue is pure friction and her hands are like ice, but he kisses her, hard, tells her his secrets and he doesn't even care as the handcuffs are placed on his wrists after admitting too much.

  
She watches him dragged away, Officer New Money by her side, and she's beautiful.

  
\---

  
_Without any view_   
**Tommy**

  
\---

She seemed determined to keep all the numbers he got from faceless birds in bars. Pulled them out of his jacket pockets and quizzed him about them - Sharon and Jessica and Mylee, all at the corner pub at some stupid hour of the night when he should have been solving a case.

  
"Self-destruction is a curse," she mutters, and he looks at her with surprise. But she's out of the room before he can question her and Tommy feels like the low-slung roof is pushing down on him and he can't really breathe.

  
He chases her down the hall, his shoes he hasn't thought about cleaning in months clacking against the concrete. Messy hair, a khaki coat, she turns around and he grabs her in his arms and kisses her before she can even open her mouth.

  
Any minute, someone could walk out. Any second, she could pull away and slap him strong against the face and he'd have to bluster and worm his way out of it, citing Helen or pain or Scotch but she knew him better than that.

  
He doesn't know why he's doing it, but he is, and she's warm and pliable and somewhere inside him he thinks he loves her but it's odd and strange and highly improper.

  
There are no words, no numbers to put down on paper. Because he knows her phone number like the back of his hand, like the back of hers, and suddenly, finally, he doesn't want to go to the pub after his shift.

  
\---

_Fin._

\---


End file.
